Mayor de Blasio’s recent pledge to close the Rikers Island jail complex within ten years was met with celebration by many — and skepticism by others. After 85 years in the public imagination, it has become hard to believe that the East River behemoth could ever really be slain. But the reality of a post-Rikers future is coming into focus [...]. Rikers is toxic, and its era is done. A change is on the wind, it seems, and the island’s aura of inevitability is finally dispersing.
— Urban Omnibus

In their Urban Omnibus essay, "A Jail to End All Jails," authors Jarrod Shanahan and Jack Norton take a closer look at the history and a potential future of one of the nation's most notorious prisons and the greater jail infrastructure of a city where the average daily incarcerated population was... View full entry

Today, the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform—a multi-disciplinary group of experts convened by City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito—released Justice In Design, a report that envisions an alternative to a single, centralized jail. It details how community-based jails, dubbed “Justice Hubs,” might function in an urban context to replace Rikers.
— co.design

The Rikers Island Correctional Facility, a complex of 10 jails and about 10,000 detainees located northeast of LaGuardia Airport, has been one of NYC's most debated problems for decades—widely criticized for corruption, brutal mistreatment of detainees, and inhumane conditions. Independent... View full entry

The Island is uniquely positioned to accommodate an expanded LaGuardia Airport that would reduce delays and could serve as many as 12 million more passengers annually.
— 6sqft

Last week, New York Mayor Bill De Blasio announced that the city would close Rikers Island jail complex. The news followed a report by the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform which recommended such action. The report also included a number of... View full entry

And just as prisons in the U.S. are now designed to look not just secure and largely windowless but so nondescript that they practically disappear, architecture firms often coat their prison-design work in several layers of euphemism.

Prisons and jails become "correctional facilities." On the website of the large corporate firm HOK Architects, which designed the 1997 Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown L.A., they are tucked into a broader portfolio of "justice buildings."
— latimes.com

“Part of the research I did for that game is I went around to Alcatraz in San Francisco because I wanted to have a level where you break into a prison,” Chris Delay, one of Introversion’s co-founders said in an interview.

“I started working on how to simulate a prison and how it was going to work. It was then that it occurred to me that building a prison was quite good fun, and that it shouldn’t be, but it is.”
— business.financialpost.com

At one time, the dorm housed as many as 40 or 50 prisoners packed together like sardines, according to Caperton. The plan is to convert the space into two or three one-bedroom apartments, which is a considerably more comfortable arrangement than the last residents of the building had. Caperton says that in the 1980s and '90s Lorton Prison had a reputation for being dangerously overcrowded.
— wamu.org

After being takent to the precinct in Greenpoint, Takeshi used his one telephone call to contact, not a lawyer, but the office of Rafael Vinoly, as he was working on a project for them. But at 7AM, the only person around to answer the phone was a security guard. Takeshi proceeded to calmly dispense instructions for a project that was supposed to occur later that day. After jotting everything down, the guard – presumably confused and slightly bewildered – asked if Takeshi needed any help.
— spoon-tamago.com

Takeshi Miyakawa, as you may recall, was recently arrested for his art installation that was mistaken as a planted bomb in NYC. Spoon & Tamago visits him in his studio to discuss his 5 days in jail, Milton Glaser, some new works as well as his current feelings about NY. View full entry

The drawings and specifications submitted by GSBS Architects contained “numerous safety, security and functional defects, including but not limited to Defective Work,” according to the suit filed Monday in state court in Provo.
— The Salt Lake Tribune